"We cannot let a totally unachievable ideal stand in the way of a good deal. I know that some of you will be urging Congress to insist that Iran forgo its domestic enrichment capacity entirely," Rice told AIPAC, as the crowd broke in to chear.

"But, but, but as desirable as that would be, it is neither realistic nor achievable."

"Even our closest internationl partners in the P5+1 do not support denying Iran the ability ever to pursue peaceful nuclear energy," Rice added. "If that is our goal, our partners will abandon us and undermine the very sanctions we have imposed so effectively together. Simply put, that is not a viable negotiating position. Nor is it even attainable. The plain fact is, no one can make Iran un-learn the scientific and nuclear expertise it already possesses."

Obama’s diplomatic march to an Iranian bomb

Analyzing the Islamic Republic isn’t a guessing game—at least it shouldn’t be. Iranian Islamists’ words and deeds are pretty consistent. Memoirs, speeches, and biographies have poured forth from those who made and sustain the regime. The New York Times and Senator Edward Kennedy may have called Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini an “enigma” and “the George Washington” of his country, respectively, but that was surely because no one at the newspaper or in the senator’s office had read the lectures that the mullah gave in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq, in 1970.

An unnamed senior U.S. official responded to a report that Iran is building out the Fordow enrichment plant by describing the facility “as a ‘Potemkin’ plant, a façade that could not operate and was under close watch by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” according to NBC News. That characterization is grossly misleading.